Rustic Furniture

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

With the dowel you can determine if a mortise is correct size and depth and use the hole to assure that hand-whittled tenors are the correct size and length. A set of hammers, wood chisels, and screwdrivers, plus an assortment of wood screws and nails complete the tool kit. Because twig furniture often ends up outdoors in the rustencouraging rain, I use solid brass, aluminum, or stainless steel fasteners.

Brass-plated and even hot-dipped zinc-galvanized fasteners will rust in time. Solid brass and stainless steel are expensive and the selection is limited but worth the cost and bother. Nails are usually punched below the twig's surface and out of sight, so almost all are small-headed finishing nails. I have a selection of galvanized plain steel-wire nails plus betterholding twist, ringed, and cementcoated styles in sizes from tiny brads through 1" (4d), 1 1/2" (6d), and 2" (8d).

There is also an occasional call for double-headed fence nails, lag screws, carriage bolts, hooks and eyes, and threaded rods and bolts in all sizes (with a hacksaw to cut and a metal file to deburr it), so I keep a variety on hand. I find that one of those Workmate-type collapsible workbenches is ideal for twigs as it is small enough to hold two to four of a chair's parts (rungs, back stays, or whatever) at once combining its builtin vise with several hand clamps and flat hold-down sticks.

To hold larger sticks and keep them from rolling, I cut 6"-wide/6 "-deep V-notches into three-foot-square pieces of half-inch plywood and nailed them to a set of three sawhorses made from 2x4s and those metal brackets you can buy in any hardware store. The trio can be set any distance apart and will hold any furniture log for mortising, tenoning, or cutting to length, no matter how twisty or off shape it may be. They also break down for easy transport to a remote workplace—to ease in-the-woods trimming of freshly collected logs for compact stacking for the trip home.

For the most pleasing lines, you want to impart a degree of two-dimensional outward splay to the legs (the right front leg, for example, aims forward and a little to the right from the perpendicular). The finest chairs have forward-skewed legs and backward-leaning backs made from single sticks. Each rear back and leg are made from one of a pair of nearly identical sticks, each having a natural crook that makes a shallow, compound "V" where the leg and back meet. This way, the top two-thirds of the sticks that frame the back are parallel, but the lower one-third that will be the legs angle back and out and away from each other. These angles will be different with each chair, but the proper trees are surprisingly easy to locate in a stand of same-age saplings. Or, select a pair of trees and notch as needed to impart the needed angles to the bottom of the trunks (be sure the top of the tree above the breaks is growing straight up). Bind the trunks to stout stakes with cloth strips, coat the wounds with grafting wax, and the trees will heal into the desired shape in another year.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print